May 1, 2012

May 1, 2012

We boarded the plane about 9pm. It is the same type of plane, Airbus 340-600, as our last flight. After dinner I slept until about 6am and Evelyn until about 7am. We land in Joburg at 8:30am on May 2nd.

May 2, 2012

This airport is very busy. It the gateway to all the countries of Southern Africa. It took about a half hour to get though immigrations. Next was the adventure of getting our bags. My biggest fear is that we (the airline) would lose a bag, we had checked four in Los Angeles. We were told our checked bags would come at station 5, no then 4, no then 10 and finally back to station 3. As we waited I found one bag and then none. The bags stopped coming and we were missing 3 of them. This was a large area so I decided to walk around to see if I could find them and I did at the far end, I guess they had begin taken off the belt. The airport staff and Virgin Atlantic were very helpful in our search.

Now that we had our bags I felt better. We followed the signs to re-check our bags to George and found out that we had to take them to the domestic terminal to check in. As soon as we left the international terminal we were spotted by two porters who took us to the check-in area. They were very helpful and did make it easy for us, and they were handsomely rewarded. One of the things I was concerned about when we decided to go to the safari camp in George was the amount of luggage we would have. Based on our last cruise I knew we would have four heavy checked bags, which was ok because we were flying Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic, but we were on a smaller plane going to George. The travel agent assured me that we would not have a problem and she was right.

The plane to George was a DH high wing twin turbo prop which holds about 60 passengers, there were only about 20 on the plane. We took off late but made up the time and landed in George at 2:45 pm, about a two hour flight. George is about 240 miles north east of Cape Town. We are going to the Botlierskop Private Game Reserve.
More about the name later.

After we got all of our bags and then looked for our driver with a sign with our name on it, which we could not find. A taxi driver helped us by calling the lodge and found out that the driver was told that our plane was 20 minitues late and decided to look at the wreckage of a Lear Jet which crashed about a year ago. He showed up in about 5 mintues so no problem. The ride to the lodge took about a half hour.

We checked in and met our guide. We are staying in tent 13. To get there we are driven from the lodge to a dock where there is a boat ( more of a raft) which is pulled across a small river and then a short walk to our tent. The tent is as nice as the one we stayed in on our last safari trip in 2001. We have a large room with a bigger then king size bed and sitting area. The bathroom has a large tub and outside is duel showers. It is fall here and while the days are nice the nights are cold. The bed has a heated pad and there is a heater for the tent. From our front porch across the river is a flat pasture where there are wildebeest and rhinos. The reserve is only 3000 hector acres and they have a number of different animals. It is a good starter for your first safari adventure. We will know more as the next two days progress.

After we freshened up we returned to the lodge for dinner. The food and service was first rate and we sampled some game, zebra steak and also a bles antelope steak. Both were very good. We were told the menu each night has 9 proteins to choose from. One or more is fine along with a pre-set menu including at least 2 pate's, soup, a first course, a salad bar, pallet cleanser (a sorbet of some type). Then the proteins of your choice with veggies, potatoes or other starch and finally desert. I'm stuffed, it was great...

We have to be up early tomorrow for our first game drive so we returned to our tent. The goal is to not fall asleep to early but be up at 5:30. With the jet lag and the time change this should be a tall order.


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Hal